Why did the console bit wars end? During the 32 bit era, PS1 and Saturn were 32 bit systems, and Nintendo was boasting about having a 64 bit system. The last time console makers boasted about bits in their system was the sixth generation, with the Dreamcast, GameCube, and PS2 being 128 bits.

Question

Why didn’t the bit war continue into the seventh generation? Why didn’t the amount of bits double to 256 bits like they did in past generations? Any insight into this would be appreciated.

In: 609

Answer 1

It’s been a long time since I was studying anything hardware-related, but I believe the answer is that 64-bit addressable memory can access more memory addresses, but once you get to 128-bit addressable memory, actual read/writes from those addresses takes longer and slows down the system.